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“Have you finished reading the documents I gave you?”
Sitting in the passenger seat, I asked my junior who was squeezing his huge body uncomfortably while reading the paper documents with enthusiasm.
“Why did you give me paper? Just send the data to my phone.”
“Ugh, don’t you understand the romance of a man yet? It may be boring, but it’s not the same as holding a physical copy.”
“Is that so.”
This is his weakness – he doesn’t understand these kinds of quirks.
I was driving my company car, a light car, towards our destination with my partner, a junior whom I have been friends with since university. He was tall, had a black belt in judo, and looked fierce, but he had a timid side to him, and his hands were skilled and quiet.
Contrary to his appearance, he was popular with girls since childhood, and now he was a video streamer who called himself Iwaro. He hated his real name, so I have been careful to call him by his stage name recently.
“Iwaro, what do you think?”
After confirming that he had placed the documents on his lap and let out a big sigh, I asked again.
“To be honest, I was surprised. Sakurasaka-san… went through a tough time.”
He wiped away the tears from his eyes as he said that. He’s a nice guy despite his tough exterior.
“After losing their parents early on, they had to rely on each other as siblings to survive.”
“They had plenty of money, though.”
“Senpai, money isn’t everything! What’s important is love!”
Iwaro scolded me in a slightly angry tone, in response to my sarcastic tone.
“But you know, money is important, right? There’s a saying that goes, ‘The rich don’t fight.’ That means that because they have enough money, they don’t get angry over trivial things. Divorce issues usually involve either cheating or money.”
“Isn’t that interpretation of ‘the rich don’t fight’ wrong?”
The big man tilted his head and groaned.
Despite his appearance, this gesture looked a bit cute, which was terrifying in a way.
“Anyway, we’re getting off track. So, what’s up?”
“Um, did you find out about Sakurasaka-san’s source of income?”
He pulled out a page of documents and shoved it in front of me.
Since I was driving, I only glanced at it briefly and nodded.
“Yeah. Neither Sakurasaka nor Yaei are employed…well, that’s not entirely accurate. They’re commonly known as traders. Apparently, they make money through stocks, forex, and cryptocurrency.”
This kind of movement of money cannot be traced by conventional means, but our office has connections everywhere, so we have plenty of ways to investigate.
According to our director, “We get a lot of cheating investigation requests from highly educated and wealthy people. Well, naturally, connections are formed. Also, if you’re the one who did it, we hold a weakness…oops, forget I said that,” he said.
“They’re smart to make money through investing.”
“Yeah, I guess so. That kind of stuff goes over my head, though.”
There was a time when a colleague of ours boasted about making a fortune in stocks, but a few months later, he was down in the dumps. Apparently, he had suffered a major loss in the subsequent market crash.
“Now that we know why Sakurasaka-san is rich, I feel better about helping. “
“I see…yeah.”
Iwaro nodded vigorously with a bright expression, but I still wasn’t convinced.
There’s no doubt that he’s making money without leaving his house. The fact that he’s successful as a trader is evidenced by the documents.
“So, does this mean the request is completed? We now know where Sakurasaka-san’s funds come from.”
“Well, yeah, but I’m personally curious and want to investigate a bit more in detail.”
“Are you adding more unnecessary work? Didn’t you get scolded by the director for investigating things beyond the scope of the investigation during a background check?”
“Uh…”
“I tried to refute Iwaro’s complaints, but I got stuck for words.
“Even though you say you don’t feel motivated to do detective work, you always seem to get unnecessarily enthusiastic when it comes to actual jobs, don’t you, Senpai?”
“What do you mean by unnecessary? Investigating in detail has led to uncovering new mysteries, you know.”
Recalling his past achievements, he puffed out his chest.
“Is that the story where you found the client’s infidelity after proving her husband’s infidelity during a cheating investigation?”
“That… You’re going off topic! I got scolded severely for that.”
He had been hired to investigate a scumbag husband suspected of domestic violence and infidelity, but it turned out that the wife who had hired him had been cheating first… and it was pretty despicable.
He was so angry that he secretly leaked that information to the husband.
“The detective doesn’t need to do more than what the client asks for! That’s what the director keeps saying. Ugh, I hate it. There’s no romance or anything.”
“Isn’t the director’s argument correct from a business standpoint?”
Don’t look at me with such a cold gaze.
“So, what unnecessary thing are you planning to do this time?”
“Don’t assume that I’m doing something unnecessary. I found some interesting things while investigating. It’s about the parents of Sakurazaka Jin and Yae.”
“It says in their records that they died in a traffic accident, right?”
Iwaro took out a page that detailed the accident and reread it. It contained a copy of an article from that time. There were also photos of the accident site, showing the front of a typical car that had been completely crushed, conveying the significant impact it had suffered. The car driven by the perpetrator was also visible, but it was also somewhat damaged, and the minimal amount of damage it had sustained was apparent.
“It seems like they were going at quite a speed. Both the driver and passenger seats are crushed.”
“Yeah, it’s completely smashed. But the other car, being a sturdy German car, managed to avoid significant damage from this level of impact.”
One reason why wealthy people and those in power used to love a particular German car was because of its safety. There was even a precedent where it had collided with a truck head-on and come out unscathed.
“Was there anything about this traffic accident that caught your attention?”
“Hmm, I’m more interested in the parents themselves than the accident. A middle-class salaryman and a housewife buying such a luxurious mansion. Isn’t that strange?”
“Well, yeah. It’s certainly not normal to own such an impressive building and vast land. Oh, could it be that their parents are wealthy?”
“That’s a miss. The mother’s parents are from an ordinary household, and you couldn’t even call them wealthy.”
“So, does that mean the father’s side is the wealthy one?”
“He’s from a village deep in the mountains. Most of the few dozen residents were apparently relatives. It was far from wealthy and felt like a settlement on the brink of collapse. Moreover, my father had completely cut ties with his parents and relatives. Look at this additional piece of evidence.”
“I handed over the additional documents that I had deliberately withheld. As I flipped through the pages, the room fell silent except for the occasional murmurs of surprise or disbelief that I could barely hear in my left ear.
“That’s quite interesting, isn’t it?”
“Well, is this really true? It’s hard to believe just like that.”
I understood their skepticism about the contents of the document. I had done my own research, but even I had thought it was shady or just a joke.
“It’s pretty interesting, don’t you think? It could be a popular topic for video streaming.”
“You’re underestimating video streaming, senior. Do you know how much effort it takes to generate views? Besides, everyone has their own genre.”
“Sorry, my bad, my bad.”
As he started to complain, I quickly apologized.
“But let’s get back on topic. What do you think about the story that the people in the village where Sakurazaka’s relatives live have been trying to obtain psychic powers, including the Six Divine Powers, from generation to generation?”
“Suddenly, it’s becoming a bit occult-like. I understand what psychic powers are, but I’ve never heard of the Six Divine Powers before.”
“Neither have I. Apparently; they are six superhuman powers found in Buddhism. I only looked it up briefly in books and on the internet. Well, to be honest, it’s just like having supernatural powers.”
It seems that there is a special power that the Buddha and bodhisattva are said to possess.
“When you say ‘psychic power,’ it sounds suspicious, but in the past, there were quite a few people who seriously trained to obtain supernatural powers. It seems that the ancestors of the residents there were ascetics.”
This is also information that I found out while researching. The clan moved to this land several hundred years ago, cut off their ties with others as much as possible, and spent their days in training.